Don Juan
By
Lord Byron
Canto I

Here my chaste Muse a liberty must take — Start not! still chaster reader — she 'll be nice hence — Forward, and there is no great cause to quake; This liberty is a poetic licence,Which some irregularity may make In the design, and as I have a high senseOf Aristotle and the Rules, 't is fitTo beg his pardon when I err a bit.

This licence is to hope the reader will Suppose from June the sixth (the fatal day,Without whose epoch my poetic skill For want of facts would all be thrown away),But keeping Julia and Don Juan still In sight, that several months have pass'd; we 'll say'T was in November, but I 'm not so sureAbout the day — the era 's more obscure.

We 'll talk of that anon. — 'T is sweet to hear At midnight on the blue and moonlit deepThe song and oar of Adria's gondolier, By distance mellow'd, o'er the waters sweep;'T is sweet to see the evening star appear; 'T is sweet to listen as the night-winds creepFrom leaf to leaf; 't is sweet to view on highThe rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky.

'T is sweet to hear the watch-dog's honest bark Bay deep-mouth'd welcome as we draw near home;'T is sweet to know there is an eye will mark Our coming, and look brighter when we come;'T is sweet to be awaken'd by the lark, Or lull'd by falling waters; sweet the humOf bees, the voice of girls, the song of birds,The lisp of children, and their earliest words.

Sweet is the vintage, when the showering grapes In Bacchanal profusion reel to earth,Purple and gushing: sweet are our escapes From civic revelry to rural mirth;Sweet to the miser are his glittering heaps, Sweet to the father is his first-born's birth,Sweet is revenge — especially to women,Pillage to soldiers, prize-money to seamen.

Sweet is a legacy, and passing sweet The unexpected death of some old ladyOr gentleman of seventy years complete, Who 've made 'us youth' wait too — too long alreadyFor an estate, or cash, or country seat, Still breaking, but with stamina so steadyThat all the Israelites are fit to mob itsNext owner for their double-damn'd post-obits.

'T is sweet to win, no matter how, one's laurels, By blood or ink; 't is sweet to put an endTo strife; 't is sometimes sweet to have our quarrels, Particularly with a tiresome friend:Sweet is old wine in bottles, ale in barrels; Dear is the helpless creature we defendAgainst the world; and dear the schoolboy spotWe ne'er forget, though there we are forgot.

But sweeter still than this, than these, than all, Is first and passionate love — it stands alone,Like Adam's recollection of his fall; The tree of knowledge has been pluck'd — all 's known — And life yields nothing further to recall Worthy of this ambrosial sin, so shown,No doubt in fable, as the unforgivenFire which Prometheus filch'd for us from heaven.

Man 's a strange animal, and makes strange use Of his own nature, and the various arts,And likes particularly to produce Some new experiment to show his parts;This is the age of oddities let loose, Where different talents find their different marts;You 'd best begin with truth, and when you 've lost yourLabour, there 's a sure market for imposture.

What opposite discoveries we have seen! (Signs of true genius, and of empty pockets.)One makes new noses, one a guillotine, One breaks your bones, one sets them in their sockets;But vaccination certainly has been A kind antithesis to Congreve's rockets,With which the Doctor paid off an old pox,By borrowing a new one from an ox.

Bread has been made (indifferent) from potatoes; And galvanism has set some corpses grinning,But has not answer'd like the apparatus Of the Humane Society's beginningBy which men are unsuffocated gratis: What wondrous new machines have late been spinning!I said the small-pox has gone out of late;Perhaps it may be follow'd by the great.

'T is said the great came from America; Perhaps it may set out on its return, — The population there so spreads, they say 'T is grown high time to thin it in its turn,With war, or plague, or famine, any way, So that civilisation they may learn;And which in ravage the more loathsome evil is — Their real lues, or our pseudo-syphilis?